Fighters Pass Radar Display

The final Fighters Pass Volume 2 character slot in Super Smash Bros Ultimate will finally be filled up on the 5th of October, completing the character roster. Who exactly is it will only be revealed on that day. But time is running out...

Here are my picks for the possible characters (indicated as blips on the radar display featured in this comic) that will finally fill that slot:

Lemming (Lemmings)

Master Chief (Halo)

Tanya Adams (Command and Conquer Red Alert)

Ash Ketchum (Pokemon)

Lip (Panel de Pon)

Rit (Rod Land, Soldam)

Sakura Kinomoto (Cardcaptor Sakura)

Klonoa (Klonoa)

Bill Rizer (Contra)

Marco Rossi (Metal Slug)

Arle Nadja (Puyo Puyo)

Yuna (Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy X-2)

Ninjara (ARMS)

Sora (Kingdom Hearts)

Dr Eggman (Sonic)

Decidueye (Pokemon)

Gradriel (Princess Crown)

Scorpion (Mortal Kombat)

Cinderace (Pokemon)

Yuko Asou (Valis)

Hebereke (Hebereke)

Dirk the Daring (Dragon's Lair)

Bandana Waddle Dee (Kirby)

Doom Slayer (Doom)

Wreck-It Ralph (Wreck-It Ralph)

Ryu Hayabusa (Ninja Gaiden, Dead or Alive)

Sir Arthur (Ghosts'N Goblins)

Gilius Thunderhead (Golden Axe)

Ryza (Atelier Ryza)

Spelunker (Spelunker)

Geno (Super Mario RPG)

Hitmonchan (Pokemon)

When the final character is announced, the comic's description will be updated as soon as possible, even if none of my choices made the cut. In the meantime, please wait for the 5th of October.

Update: Sora from Kingdom Hearts qualified for Super Smash Bros Ultimate. Looks like for once I finally got it right this time...

Third Strike

Baseball and bowling are sports featured in the Wii Sports series, with bowling being in all three games in the series, while baseball is omitted from Wii Sports Resort. Both sports, however, happen to have different perspectives about getting the third strike.

In baseball, getting three strikes in a row means you're out. In bowling, getting three strikes in a row means you scored a turkey. Talk about negative and positive perspectives...

Remembering Clive Sinclair

It is with deep sadness that Sir Clive Sinclair, the creator of the ZX-80, ZX-81 and ZX Spectrum, passed away on the 16th of September, 2021, at the age of 81. He invented the future, but the future was not ready for it. Perhaps his greatest legacy was that he introduced the world to affordable computing when the ZX Spectrum was released on the 23rd of April, 1982.

Farewell, great inventor. Your legacy will live on through the various ZX Spectrum fan clubs.

Being Square for 20 Years

Today marks the 20th Anniversary of the Japanese launch of the Nintendo GameCube. Although the GameCube is not as fondly remembered as the NES, SNES, N64, Wii, Switch or the Nintendo handhelds due to low sales over its lifetime, this console gave us Luigi's Mansion, Super Smash Bros Melee, Pikmin, Dance Dance Revolution Mario Mix and Mario Kart Double Dash.

The GameCube only did better than the Sega Dreamcast because the Dreamcast was discontinued months before the GameCube's launch date. Had Nintendo learnt to be humble, they would have shown more respect for the GameCube and its Game Boy Player, which brought most of the Game Boy family's game library to consoles. This prolonged the lifespan of the Game Boy family, which was eventually discontinued in 2010. The GameCube was also one of the first Nintendo consoles to feature games published by Sega, resulting in a reconciliation between the two competitors after Sega's exit from hardware production.

If being humble was Nintendo's thing, which obviously it was not, relations between Nintendo and its customers would not be so toxic. No wonder Nintendo had been the target of boycotts. They really need to learn humility as much as Japan needs to embrace common law.

Happy 20th Anniversary, Nintendo GameCube!

Similar, yet different

Since the dawn of art, fanservice has been one of the most recurring themes in the history of art, illustrations and photography. The obsession with scanty female clothing takes the lion's share of fanservice, and it does not help when several female garments look similar to each other.

It is possible that leotards and lingerie may have influence swimwear designers to design new female swimsuits. The leotard's design may have been the inspiration for the female one-piece swimsuit that we are all familiar with today, and the bikini's design could have been inspired by female undergarments. While the designs of male undergarments get their inspiration from shorts worn by boxers, which we get boxer shorts from, and later on, swimming trunks, female swimsuit designs got their inspiration from bras, panties and leotards. In other words, fashion designers have unknowingly created aquatic versions of the bra, the panty and the leotard, all of which were not designed for swimming.

Excluded from WarioWare

Today is the day WarioWare: Get It Together! launches for the Nintendo Switch. This means WarioWare is back with more zany microgames. Unfortunately for Waluigi fans, the lanky purple guy is not going to be in the game at all. Guess Waluigi will have to continue wallowing in self-pity over being left out of WarioWare...

Nintendo games and characters © Nintendo.

Skirt Fell Down!

Wardrobe malfunctions such as belts ripping apart due to broad waists and skirts falling down as a result used to be funny. However, new regulations that have been implemented in recent years have announced that wardrobe malfunctions hurt the feelings of other people and are therefore not funny...

Future of Japanese Freedom

Japan needs to be reminded that they owe their democracy to losing World War 2 to the United States and United Kingdom.

If you want to know the real reason behind the litigations taken by Nintendo and Square Enix against so-called acts of intellectual property piracy, which includes the counterfeiting of copyrighted trademarks that fan games are guilty of, keep in mind that the Japanese government included copyright infringement as one of the serious offences listed in their 2017 anti-terrorism bill. Then again, copyright infringement was already weaponized by terrorists for several years already, so it would make sense to include copyright infringement as one of the serious offences in an anti-terrorism bill. However, this would erode freedom of creativity, which proliferated as a result of the Fair Use Act and its equivalents. This anti-terrorism bill is not the only thing that is endangering the freedom of both Japanese and foreign net users.

Recently, the fury of anti-Olympics protesters in Tokyo was met with police brutality. This is not a good sign for Japanese people's freedoms. As if the current pandemic wasn't bad enough, Japanese people could lose more freedoms in the following days after the end of the Paralympics in Tokyo. Soon, freedom of speech, freedom of expression, freedom of the press, and freedom of creativity in Japan will be no more. The last time this happened was in the 1930s, prior to World War 2. In other words, the sun has set for the Japan that we all grew up with since the later Showa and early Heisei periods, and we will all be witnessing the second death of Japanese democracy...

Predictions for an Endgame Scenario

Author's Note: Currently, as at the time of this comic being published, Wooden Plank Studios' Kazuya Story Arc is still ongoing.

It all started with Sephiroth poisoning his guests at the E3 Dinner Party. Tekken's Kazuya Mishima managed to find Incineroar and Kirby still alive. However, he had to begin his quest to revive everyone who perished at the E3 Dinner Party. Why Sephiroth poisoned everyone remains unclear. However, it may have something to do with Sony not being at E3 2021. This could mean that the mastermind behind Sephiroth's mass poisoning was not only his mother Jenova, who is not quite dead despite being technically dead for thousands of years since the destruction of the Cetra, but Sony, the creators and owners of the PlayStation brand, could possibly have been involved in what appears to be an anti-Nintendo plot as well as an anti-Microsoft plot.

We have not reached the point where any of these endgame scenarios will happen yet. But the one where Sephiroth pulls a Tim Curry by quoting Cherdenko's quote of escaping his enemies, will reveal that Sony is the one place that hasn't been corrupted by Nintendo's tripe. All three possible endgame scenarios will involve the PlayStation characters turning their weapons against Sephiroth because he hurt the Sackboy's feelings.

It's possible Polygon Man was the true mastermind behind all of this. He disliked E3 ever since he was rejected by PlayStation creator Ken Kutaragi at E3 1995.

Update: None of my predictions were correct, but there was an Avengers: Endgame-style final battle between Kazuya's army and Sephiroth's army, and Kazuya's army emerged victorious because Kirby disabled Sephiroth's Jenova Cells with a Friend Heart, allowing Cloud and Joker to land a coup de grace on him. Once Sephiroth felt that could not stand punching Pichu, his army of villains disbanded, and he had to be Kazuya's prisoner. As for Jenova and Polygon Man, neither one showed up because they prefer to keep to the sidelines. It makes sense for Jenova because she was technically dead for thousands of years since the extinction of the Cetra people. In Polygon Man's case, he keeps to the sidelines even when you face him in the Boss Arena. The most the malevolent head could do is transform into stage hazards or slam on you like a Thwomp, which leaves him vulnerable to attack.

Now that Kazuya's Quest is over, Kazuya begins a new quest in the Paldea Region. Congratulations to Wooden Plank Studios for creating one of the longest story arcs in webcomic history!